WIP Wednesday!!

Wow it's been awhile since I've participated in WIP Wednesday, but I'm so excited about my current project.

It's an old WIP, I start it about 3 years ago. This quilt was intended to be for my bed, but I was lazy in making it and then discovered Swoon. But now that I have it out again I'm wondering why I put it aside.

I had most of the piecing of the blocks finished, so it was basically like assembling 9-patches and went quickly. 

While the blocks themselves are very striking, the setting really sets the blocks off in a beautiful way (I feel like I can gush about it, it's not my design, lol). I am not typically a fan of sashings with cornerstones, I usually piece the blocks and vertical sashing in rows and the cornerstones and horizontal sashing in rows then join them together. Ugh. But I got a great tip on instagram this time around - if you sew the sashing to one side and top (or bottom), then join the blocks into rows, it's just like piecing blocks together, and if you need to fussy cut the sashing at all (which I really needed to do), then it makes it much easier. Seriously, life changing! 

They came together so beautifully.

Today I got started on sewing on borders. There are 3, and they are tedious, but again it's so striking it is worth it. 

And once this is all done I'll be doing it again. The original queen size quilt had 25 blocks, but I split it into 2 quilts. This one will be a Christmas gift, the other I will keep for myself. =)

Can you have too many quilts? {WIP Wednesday}

I've been quilting since 2005. I have completed a whopping 67 quilts in those 8 years! This ranges from little wall hangings and table runners all the way up to the big bed size quilts.  (I just added them up, I'm a bit shocked!) Many of those were gifts or have been sold in my Etsy shop, but today I decided to figure out just how many are still around.

Top to Bottom:
1. Scrappy Trip Along  2. Liberty  3. Spiderweb  4. Operation Iraqi Freedom
5. Christmas Sampler  6. Sonnet  7. Andrew's Quilt  8. Radiant Ripples
9. Our Wedding Quilt (made by my mother in law)
10. Swoon

Our wedding quilt. 

Brynlee's Quilts
Top to Bottom:
1. Honeybun Hour Glass, baby quilt I made her 
2. Pink and Green Flower baby quilt made by my mother in law
3. Neverland Pirates  4. Summer Sampler  5. Sparkle Punch

Bryn's baby quilt made by my mother in law

Kayten's Quilts
Top to Bottom:
1. Pink and brown heart applique baby quilt made by my mother in law
2. Triple Irish Flower Chain, 1st bday gift  3. Kayten's Baby Quilt
4. Katy's Hopscotch

Katy's baby quilt made by my mother in law
(Can you imagine appliqueing all of those circles, and she appliqued the rickrack on so it wouldn't curl up!)

So, besides smaller wall hangings, I have 19 usable quilts in my house, 3 made by my mother in law, 16 made by me. Click the links above to check out details about the quilts. If anybody wants to see more detail of the ones made by my mother in law (like the hand quilting on all of them!), let me know in the comments and I'll get some good pictures. She is amazingly talented, and is the one who introduced me to quilting by signing me up for a block of the month club. I was instantly hooked!

When they aren't in use I've got a bit of storage room in our wardrobe, or down in my sewing room. One day I might have to find a new place to store our clothes, because the wardrobe will be full of quilts. It seems like most of my WIPs are ones I had intended to keep, I might have to rethink that...

How many quilts have you made? Are they all still around?

And to make this a little more WIP Wednesday applicable, my current WIPs:
I've regained focus on Starry Samhain Night, so far I have 6 stars made

with a 7th in progress

I've been esp distracted by the Marcelle Medallion. It has been fun and challenging so far, I'm trying to take it slow so I can enjoy it, plus I'm waiting on some orange stash builders from Pink Castle Fabrics. I've added the next border, but for some unknown reason iPhoto stopped sharing photos with Flickr, so this instragram pic will have to suffice. 

I've also been playing with some Happy Go Lucky scraps (yep I have scraps, which means I already have a quilt pieced out of that beautiful fabric, check back in oh....6 months when I can share it with you all. =) Just know TraceyJay is awesome as usual with her quilt designing skills.) These are 1 1/4" hexies.

And since this post already talks so much about numbers, 2013 stats:

Finishes: 6, well plus 2 that haven't been blogged. Sheesh I'm slacker.

WIPs: Roughly 20, I need to go through my list and probably add a few.

March Goals

My most necessary finish for March is Sparkle Punch. I have 20 days to have it 100% done, still plenty of time considering I made Seeing Squares aka the Largest Quilt She's Ever Made in 33 days. But I've been stressing because of other projects that need to be done this month as well. So to alleviate some of that stress I took it to Eagle Mountain Quilting, where I know amazing things will happen! 

The decision to take it to the quilter meant I needed to crank out the top and FAST. I had all the star points finished, and was starting to work on the layout last Wednesday, but none of the top had to be pieced, and I needed it done by Friday morning before we headed down to Salt Lake City for the weekend. And of course I didn't decided I needed to get the whole thing done until Thursday morning.... =) Let's just say my husband REALLY loves me and supports me, and knows that B needs a quilt that actually fits her bed. Also I have REALLY good children who are content playing around me (and maybe watch too much TV sometimes). 

I'll save all the details of piecing and what not for the post about the quilt, but it was fun. And I have no idea how anyone can pull an all nighter. I made it to 12:30pm and my eyes were starting to glaze over and I feared some really wobbly seams so I gave up. I only had about an hour more of work, but it went quickly when I was fresh and rested in the morning.

Anyway onto other stuff. 

March Goals:

1. Finish Sparkle Punch (which may involve a little colorful handquilting, I can't decide.) by March 25th. {Goal for the Lovely Year of Finishes}

2. Finish quilt for TraceyJay - at least the top, the whole thing if possible, ASAP.

3. Get Farmer's Wife squares laid out and sewn together, borders as well if possible. 

February Recap:

1. Finish quilt and bind Scrappytripalong. {Lovely Year of Finishes Project} DONE!

#scrappytripalong more photos here.

2. Get B's Sparkle Punch 100% Pieced DONE!

As described above, this was accomplished as of March 1st, so yay!

3. Get Mom & Dad's Churn Dash cut. DONE!

Even better, I am on the last leg of binding, and just need to stitch on a label. A post full of pics to come in the next few days, but for now, a little taste of the amazing quilting done by Eagle Mountain Quilting (computerized quilting pattern called Merrily Feathers). The texture is AMAZING!

Linking up:

WIP #notgoingtoquiltcon #quiltnon

The biggest WIP for the last week has been returning my very sick kids to health - while sick. UGH!
Monday we finally made a trip to the doctors because Katy just was not kicking her cough. After the most expensive trip to the pharmacy in history, everyone is improving (B had a double ear infection on top of a cold! Katy had croup and a single ear infection!).

Cute Katy is now the proud owner of this fancy inhaler contraption.
On top of croup the doctor wondered if she may have asthma. Either way the inhaler is helping her breath.

I got a lot of cuddles from B 

Before things got to bad, I was able to get a new bookcase build and put up in my sewing room, and some much needed organization done. Do you know how lovely it is to have your stash visible on shelves? It is so pretty! My sewing room has come along way since last summer, I did get rid of the beautiful blue desk, but I needed storage more than another surface (which I never used).

I also made some progress with some projects!

Last week Sparkle Punch looked like this

And after a lot of this:

oh chain piecing, how I love thee

and this

all points sewn on, waiting for excess to be trimmed off

and this

Trimming off excess. I discovered I could layer them and knock out a few at a time!

Then some of this

After pressing, came a whole lot of squaring up

And finally this

it's going to be sooooooooooo pretty!!!

As you saw in my last post I decided to stop with 42 Farmer's Wife blocks. I think that was a very wise choice, and I have all the blocks sewn into their sashing/setting/whatever, ready for me to settle on their layout and stitch them together.

Pre-squaring up. Mine finished at about 8.75" square.
Sewing 2.5" strips around the ones on the left was actually too much fabric.

I instagramed (@happierthanabird) most of my weekend jumping in on the fun of #notgoingtoquiltcon and #quiltnon. Apparently I am super productive when I can't go somewhere I really want to be. Maybe in some future year I'll do well at saving up all the money it would take to go. Probably not though. I'll just buy more fabric.

WIP Wednesday

Because I have been working my butt off, I decided I should share.

My parents commissioned a quilt for their bed, and it has been such a fun project. Giant Churn Dash! (tutorial can be found her at Elvy Crafts)
24" blocks are awesome folks!! Seriously, love them! Esp when they are blocks you are used to seeing smaller scale.

24.5" churn dash compared with a 6.5" block

For an oversized queen quilt I made 16 blocks, they went together so quickly!

I quickly realized my design wall would be useless for this project.

Floor space was hard enough to come by.
{Rows ready to sew together.}

It got more tedious when I was pinning and matching up points, and sewing the 96" long stretches joining the rows together. But it was awesome to have the quilt top come together so quickly!

I added a little 2.5" border around the outside, to give it a little more size in case of shrinkage.

I'm glad we'll be sending this to a quilter, I don't think my straight lines would really do it justice.

My design wall couldn't accommodate the size.

Of course my adorable little sewing buddy is always hanging around, she had to join me in pressing today.

"See mama, just like you."

And I have 34 to get her Sparkle Punch quilt done! I can't believe she's going to be 3!
I need to sew on the 2nd star points, then go back to the tedious process of trimming then pressing and then squaring up all of those squares. I'm glad that little girl is worth it!

Halfhearted WIP Wednesday

I was just going to skip posting this week, but then I got distracted from the #scrappytripalong and came up with something else to do, and I love it so much I want to share it!

I was looking through one of my many Pinterest quilting boards and came across this tutorial from In Color Order and realized it would be the perfect pattern to use on my Lillybelle Art Gallery fabric (by Bari J). I had to cut my squares a little smaller - 17.5" - than the tutorial because my fat quarter bundle was a bit wonky. I'm adding a 3" border around the outside so the star will really pop. It'll finish, pre-washing at, 73". I'm already planning on playing around with this design, smaller for baby quilts. So quick and easy!

I should stop putting off #scrappytripalong because it thisclose to being done. It is really just so tedious I don't even want to look at it right now. But I need to because my awesome friend Heidi @ Buttons & Butterflies is going to quilt it for me! Hopefully tomorrow I can get focused again.

I've been sewing it together in manageable quadrants (3x3 blocks). The bottom is done, I just need to sew the 2 quadrants together. I'm really happy with it, but I really look forward to moving on. 

I should have more sewing done, but I've spent a lot of time shoveling my driveway (sick hubby, plus shoveling is an awesome workout!). I think we've got about 18" in our yard. Sigh. Is it spring yet?

WIP Wednesday

I've had a very productive week! Last Thursday I posted the first finish of the year, and quickly followed with #2 and #3!

1. Blooms for Melissa  2. Little Boy Blue  3. Liberty

It feels so good to have some finishes done!! The first 2 are at or on their way to their new homes. Liberty is just for me. =)

I've also been working hard making a scrappytripalong quilt for me. I know I should have learned from the little 9 block one, but 36 blocks is a whole lot of tedious work! 

Strip sets

Cutting strips.
I decided to do this differently than the original tutorial. I wanted to make sure I was cutting my strips straight, and could do some fussy cutting if need be on certain pieces.

Stacks of pretty strips!

Then I sew the ends together on 5 of the 6 strip sets...

...and I end up with this. I pin them all together until it's time to rip seams.

Hopefully soon I'll have a lot more of these! I can't wait to see the blocks come together.

Linking up:

WIP Wednesday Again =)

Like so many other quilters I've been sucked into the #ScrappyTripAlong. When I first heard about it I started digging through my fabric and thought "I have no good scraps and my stash sucks!" I actually started 2 attempts, one with a Riley Blake fabric roll, but after discovering how poorly the roll had been cut (the strips tapered from 2.5" down to 2") and that this mess up resulted in an odd rectangle block I stopped, revisited my stash, started cutting into an Art Gallery bundle, messed up cutting, set it aside. Finally I just went for the QuiltCon solids bundle I never ended up using when I realized I couldn't go to QuiltCon (*tear*). Then this happened.

{poor instagram pic before I joined the blocks}
It's all basted and ready for quilting, just can't decide how to do it.

Then I decided to order a scrap bag in hopes of getting some awesome fabric.

Fabric Shoppe 2 lbs scrap bundle and 1 lb solids bundle
(I was please with some of it, don't like some of it, and really annoyed that none of it was cut straight.) 

At the same time that I got this, somebody on the Flickr group suggested a strip swap and I decided to host one. I still have about 10 slots open if anyone would like to join in, details and sign up can be found here.

And then madness ensued. I spent 2 full days cutting fabric. 

I started cutting strips from the above bundle, plus a few pieces of fabric I had. I ended up with enough for 4 slots. 

Since I was on a roll cutting I decided to make progress with one of my January goals and cut out my daughter's Sparkle Punch quilt. And then I discovered where half my stash has been hiding for months waiting to be cut into, so while cutting out the Sparkle Punch squares, I started cutting more strips.

They're taking over!

Then I sorted them by color, only to stumble upon a pretty color palette I knew I had to use for my quilt.

Meet Fuzz, the teeny fuzzy elephant my 2 yo insisted I take a picture of.
{sorry for the poor lighting} 

Of course settling on this color palette means I cut A TON of extra strips, way more than I needed for the swap.  And by the time my husband got home from work yesterday I had finished cutting enough strips for a 36-block Scrappy Trip Along for myself, almost as much for swapping/another project and I finished cutting the 462 squares needed to form the stars in Sparkle Punch. Time to change the rotary cutter blade!

The closer strip stack is for my quilt, the further one is for swapping and such.
And I am so excited about Sparkle Punch! Watch for more progress on that, I have 2 months to get it done.

And as of last night I have 15 strip sets sewn together, I need at least 36.

I also had a lovely finish this week, more details to come tomorrow, but here is a peek

Linking up: